Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Bones behaving badly

There are innumerable joys to pregnancy, from nausea to unbridled emotions, fatigue and a recent companion, joint instability. In continuance of my experience that the more painful the ailment the more painful its pronunciation, as if its name alone should cause one to shudder (except of course for labour, the exception to every rule, that aptly describes its experience with the one word), I have had the blessed visit of uninvited symphysis pubis dysfunction and like the best of dysfunctions, it is graced with its own acronym, SPD. Put simply as relaxin is released throughout your body to aid in delivery, but somehow badly programmed to not specifically target the pelvic area and be released only right before delivery ( an example of code cheating by our biology), all our ligaments are let loose and set out to party, including the symphysis pubis. So if you're wondering why you're suddenly more supple and flexible, conquering poses in yoga that you may have been struggling through pre-belly, it's due to a hormone gone wild.

As I started with loose ligaments in the first place, leading to a few cartilage conundrums in my wrists and knees pre-pregnancy, I took the now familiar hot pain in my knees and wrists with what I hoped was stoic acceptance. Proud of myself for letting go and accepting the return of joint pain, my continual party crasher, I did not expect that this time it would come vamped up, bringing pelvic pain into the mix. I spent one whole day utterly miserable, feeling what I can only describe as a continual burning pressure in my pelvis and was admittedly quite irascible throughout. The only relief was to get on my mat in balasana, with my legs separated more than usual to make room for my big frontal companion.

Along with ligaments letting loose, the gap in the pelvic joint widens a few mm during pregnancy (we all end up with child bearing hips!) and if it widens too much (please, no!) you face another latin tongue twister with its own acronym, DSP, or diastasis symphysis pubis and a lot more ouch. I'm going to try and focus on the bright side of this hip widening - yes, there's the arrival of my son but also, from a girl that never had hips for Fosse moves, maybe I'll finally have that hour glass figure ( but alas, would require a whole new wardrobe).

In addition to my pelvic predicament, I've had the blessing of round ligament pain, which started quite early on in the second trimester. In part, I believe this is may be ill targeted karma for unwittingly causing my husband massive amounts of pain after his hernia surgery when I thought a good past time would be watching comedies (in hindsight, I advise the tragic genre instead for such circumstance). The pain does not last long but it's a stabbing pain that makes up in force what it lacks temporally. Twisting, turning, laughing and coughing can bring it on and it forces me to double over in pain.